Ars HTPC Guide: December 2010

With all the non-PC options for getting video from the Internet onto your TV, …

The home theater PC (HTPC) market is very different than it used to be. Two years ago, the market was more or less DVRs and the HTPC, a few tentative OEM takes at the market, and a few standalone boxes.

Today, the HTPC space is much more crowded, and the market for these devices is not nearly as clear.

In some ways, building an HTPC has never been easier. Buying one, even, is a much easier task, with fairly workable pre-builts such as the Dell Inspiron Zino HD and Acer Revo nettop. The trickiest part of getting encrypted cable/satellite feeds into the HTPC is just now becoming doable, and feeding streaming or already-downloaded content to your TV is often made easy by the fact that a lot of existing hardware (consoles, Blu-ray players, and even TVs) can do it out of the box.

The fact that HTPC-like capabilities now come bundled with so many home theater products makes the HTPC that much harder to place in today's media center. Think about the problem in light of the four typical tasks of a HTPC: timeshifting/recording live TV (via over-the-air [OTA], cable, or satellite), Blu-ray and DVD playback, streaming online content, and playing back previously downloaded content. If your existing equipment can do all or most of this already, or if one or two new special-purpose boxes are cheaper than an HTPC, why would one bother?

Four tasks, one device

The reality is that most HTPC builders are technically inclined people, and they're often representative of a segment of consumers that does want to handle HTPC-type tasks in a single device. Devices such as the WD HD TV Live, Popcorn Hour, Apple TV, Boxee Box, all do parts of this job very well, but some parts not at all (such as Blu-ray playback). The DVR from your cable or satellite company (or that TiVo still laying around?) that does timeshifting/recording of live TV so well doesn't handling streaming or separately downloaded content so well. And similar limitations affect gaming consoles such as the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii. The PS3 is perhaps the most capable of the bunch with its internal Blu-ray drive, but it still doesn't do timeshifting/recording of live TV, and storage on a PS3 is not that cheap.

So at the end of 2010, the HTPC has mainly become a geek endeavor. Doing everything with one box rather than two, three, or four of them—what geek wouldn't want that?

The HTPC also adds in some potential additional capabilities—gaming, photo editing, complete home media hub, etc.—beyond the four key ones we've described, although now we're getting a little more complicated than what can be easily discussed in a single guide.

Either way, the HTPC exists out of both need and the fact that it's kind of cool.

What we cover

We cover two key boxes in this guide: the All-In-One, and the Back-End, with varieties for a light-weight front-end.

The All-In-One places everything in a single set-top box. The Back-End is designed to be bigger, to store more content, and maybe to have to worry a little less about noise and appearance. As a back-end, it can also interface to devices other than your HTPC, depending on what software you use and what set-top device you have. Feeding content to an existing PS3 or Boxee is one very possible route, especially if you decide you do not need the full abilities of the classic HTPC.

Extensive discussion on devices such as the Boxee Box, WD HD TV Live, Popcorn Hour, Apple TV, and the like are simply too much to cover in one guide. We've used several of these, and for what they do, most work quite well. They just don't do everything that a good HTPC does, and they're not guaranteed to be able to play any format you throw at them.

Software

Multiple HTPC front-ends exist. The couch-friendly, 10-foot user interface is key to comfortable use for most, even with a nice 1080p TV like the massive 60" Kuro 2 plasma sitting in Hannibal's media room.

Common front-ends include Windows 7 Home Premium (or Ultimate) with its media center edition (MCE) front-end, XMBC, Media Portal, MeediOS, MythTV, GB-PVR, and a ton of others. On the Ars forums and in the Orbiting HQ, Windows 7 and XBMC seem to dominate, although that's not exactly a representative survey of the population at large.

For the back-end, several of these work well, plus Windows Home Server with the Power Pack 3 does a semi-decent job of integration with the capable WHS platform.

While we do not have an official recommendation, we have spent enough time using Windows 7's interface to be happy with it, and enough previous time with XBMC and MythTV to know they work well.

I'm planning on building my first htpc over the holidays, so the timing of this guide is perfect. I like to keep gadgets off when not in use to conserve power, so my question is: can you still record shows if the pc is in a low power state (i.e. sleep mode), or must it be always on? I'd rather not leave it on 24/7. Thanks.

While it is obvious much work went into this guide, it doesn't seem to address every-day usage.

CableCard is tier 1. But only if it is supported by your cable company, which you will not know for absolute certain until after you purchase it and attempt to get it installed. Go read the myriad of horror stories. Have satellite? No decrypting for you. Want to use something besides WMC? No decrypting for you. Want to play your recordings on all your home media devices and portables? No decrypting for you. CableCard and the Ceton sound great in theory but do not deliver so much in practice.

The HD PVR captures component analog - so it could be considered tier 2 - but it captures from both cable and satellite set top boxes in 1080i/720p + AC3, with the results being unecrypted high definition files you can edit, convert, and play on all your home and portable media devices at will. Channel changing can be done by various blaster, serial, or firewire configurations. And you are not confied to WMC for your HTPC software.. you can even run Linux.

Many people capture unencrypted QAM from their cable co. And many people capture free OTA HD. If your signal and/or reception is good, these are also great ways to get unencrypted HD content.

can you still record shows if the pc is in a low power state (i.e. sleep mode), or must it be always on? I'd rather not leave it on 24/7. Thanks.

It's got to be on to do the recording. I suppose it's possible that some PCs can be told "go to sleep and wake up in 2 hours."

The reason I've used Windows Media Center since the MCE2005 version (Now using Windows 7) is this: The PC wakes up to record a show, then goes right back to sleep (S3 Suspend, actually). Works perfectly, every time. I would have probably used Mythbuntu, but it's been simply too hard for me to duplicate that behavior. I just can't get that to work in Linux.

I have experienced no end of RAID issues with WD Green drives. Check any NAS forums (QNAP, Synology, buffalo etc.) for the gory details.... suffice to say that its almost that WD intentionally borked RAID compatibility to force higher-end users onto their RE and SE lines. Plus over the course of 24x7 on scenario, I've lost 2 out of 4 drives in 18 months. Anecdotal I know but the RAID performance/dropout issues are across the board for many many people.

Also it would have been nice to include a 'how to make it a decent virtual xbox' section: my media centre happily churns through most modern titles at 720p with a hundred dollar video card and a xbox 360 controller for windows (wireless).

I'm planning on building my first htpc over the holidays, so the timing of this guide is perfect. I like to keep gadgets off when not in use to conserve power, so my question is: can you still record shows if the pc is in a low power state (i.e. sleep mode), or must it be always on? I'd rather not leave it on 24/7. Thanks.

This is probably the same for other PVR apps. I use MediaPortal and it will wake the PC up for recordings and then go back to sleep once its finished.

Another PSU recommendation is the Enermax ECO80+, the fan is silent at all but the highest of speeds (unlikely to be needed in this or most HTPC's). The 400W version is ~$60 and it includes a free silent 120mm fan of the same design as in the PSU.

first off, wintermute000, your actually KIND of right. WD has Time Limited Error Recovery(TLER) disabled on most of their drives, so drive encounters error(the drive is unresponsive during this point), sits and tries to recover while RAID controller waits,drive doesn't respond in the set time, RAID controller drops it as a dead drive, this can actually be enabled but it voids warranty etc more trouble than it's worth.

I fall into the more extreme side of the builds

Now on to my HTPC buildAthlon 550Gigabyte MA785G-S2H4GB 1600MHz Mushkin Memory (don't remember the model off the top of my head)Corsair NOVA 32GBCorsair 400CX PSUOrigen S10 Black(BEAUTIFUL case btw) http://www.origenae.co.kr/en/htpc_s10v.htmMedia Browser on top of WMC(Windows 7 Ultimate x64)(be amazed how hard it is to get WMC to play mkvs with video acceleration and all in WMCx64)Scythe Big ShurikenPioneer slot loading DVD drive(never used but it feels incomplete without it)I'll be getting the Ceton InfiniTV 4 soon

A much cheaper alternative is a refurb PC. My current machine is a Gateway with a 1.8ghz E6300 processor. It came with a dual ATSC/NTSC tuner. I paid $250 for it and added 500gb drive for DVR storage. It can handle recording a full HD stream and an analog cable channel simultaneously. I use an XBox360 as the front end at the TV. Strangely enough, I found out MCE remotes also work with XBox 360s.

Why no love for the Atom/ION combo? You make a mention of it but honestly I won't be building an HTPC until the next refresh on those products because currently the Asus AT5IONT-1 doesn't have a "deluxe" version with built-in Wifi. As soon as they do, I'm building one, and it will only cost me about $400 instead of the $1.1k+ that this guide recommends. However, I'm not interested in encoding/DVR because I don't have cable anymore.

first off, wintermute000, your actually KIND of right. WD has Time Limited Error Recovery(TLER) disabled on most of their drives, so drive encounters error(the drive is unresponsive during this point), sits and tries to recover while RAID controller waits,drive doesn't respond in the set time, RAID controller drops it as a dead drive, this can actually be enabled but it voids warranty etc more trouble than it's worth.

Topherhead, I know, I just couldn't be bothered fully explaining it lolBut did you know that WD has since locked the firmware of newer revision drives so you can't change the TLER parameters anymore. I manually flashed my WD green drives to enable it, one died, I RMA-ed it, it came back unable to be modified. This is also confirmed on teh internets.I also get ~20% crappier speeds compared to the old Server Edition drives I was using in the same chassis. Mind you the NAS chassis is old and slow (QNAP TS409) but the speeds are even worse with green drives, I'm only getting around 8Mb/s sustained writes in RAID5, before it was 10-12.

Anyhow you're talking RAID and always-on scenario, don't cheap out on drives is my recommendation, if cash is a concern then you probably should not be building a multi terabyte file server backend LOL. My interim solution is to run everything through Haali splitter with an insane 256Mb input buffer so I buffer through any dropouts. It works but its an honest to got workaround lol

The refurb PC option should absolutely be mentioned, as long as the CPU is 'good enough' (IMO at least say early Core2Duo) all you need is an external drive for storage for the ultimate cheap but good enough solution. I'd almost prefer it to atom+ion as its far more powerful esp if you throw in an aftermarket card (probably has to be low profile but low profile cheap card + say early Core2Duo runs rings around atom+ion). As an added bonus those refurb office PCs tend to be quiet.

winterute000, yeah i had heard they locked them down(i knew you couldn't get the utility from WD anymore, they used to email it to you t request, but you could find it around, but i hadn't checked it) but the initial point of RAID was to allow redundancy, extra performance was a side effect. My server can do ~1GB/s(read that capital B) and im actually on the market to get some 10gb network hardware just because i can And since im using a SAS RAID card one thing i have to keep in mind is compatibility which the Hitachis have while most WDs don't. I agree with your notion that you shouldn't cheap out on drives, i usually stick to WDs elsewhereBut nothing about building my file server is about saving money

Having built and configured a couple of WMC HTPCs I've always found the problem in the configuration and bugs, not selecting hardware specs. I'd love to see a guide with the machine built, set up and tested, with all the myriad capabilities tested. For example your guide includes no Blu-Ray playback software, which should be figured in the costs.

A much cheaper alternative is a refurb PC. My current machine is a Gateway with a 1.8ghz E6300 processor. It came with a dual ATSC/NTSC tuner. I paid $250 for it and added 500gb drive for DVR storage. It can handle recording a full HD stream and an analog cable channel simultaneously.

Sure, it won't record "TV", but who watches live television anymore anyway? Torrent that shit.

Agreed. Any amount of money for any kind of tuner is a waste. Just subscribe to cable and use the supplied DVR if you care about broadcast that much, and I'm really only making room for live sports here. For TV series, Netflix streaming and torrents is all you need.

I second the SageTV mention. I use it pretty much because it's the only software out there (at least, that I know of) that's capable of controlling my DirecTV set-top box via serial cable instead of an IR blaster.

As for my actual HTPC, I didn't actually set out to build an HTPC at all when I put it together. What I wanted was the ability to game on my couch/TV without having to buy locked-down proprietary hardware and have to pay an extra monthly fee for the ability to play online. In fact, we didn't even have TV service at that time. When we finally got DirecTV, I just threw in a used $30 Hauppauge capture card off eBay, a $15 remote also from eBay, and a couple of 2TB hard drives to store recordings on. Since we record way more stuff than we actually watch, they're already about half full.

Of course, this article tends to focus on small, unobtrusive, silent PCs that resemble a traditional piece of home theater equipment. Since my intention was originally to build a gaming rig (and don't get me wrong, it still fulfills that purpose wonderfully), it LOOKS like a computer. I used a full ATX case, complete with see-thru side window and blue LEDs. Of course, this does give me the advantage of being able to add virtually as many expansion cards and hard drives as I want. It does fit just fine in a cabinet next to my TV, and if anyone asks me why there's a PC in my living room I just tell them it's my version of an XBox.

SageTV, combined with Windows 7, sets wake-up timers so I don't have to leave it on 24/7. The system wakes itself up a few minutes before it's supposed to record a show, records it, scans the newly-saved file for commercials and marks them so they can be auto-skipped when I play it back (which, as far as I know, is a capability that can ONLY be found in a HTPC), and goes back to sleep after the usual 15 minutes of inactivity. Contrary what another commenter said, this means that I do not have to leave the unit on 24/7 (and if I did, I would certainly notice it on my power bill; as it is I can't tell the difference from before when I used it for gaming only), and in fact it spends most of its time in sleep mode. If I need to access files on it from another PC in the house, it's a simple wake-on-LAN command and remote desktop connection away.

The one reason I still use an HTPC is because none of the TV providers in my area sell a device that has three or more tuners, so the four in my HTPC, while SD, at least allow me to catch all of the shows we watch without having to download them.

And yes, we still like just watching TV and finding out about new programs that way.

2) I nearly choked when I saw "hopefully not-too-expensive" followed closely by $1140.

3) Where's the love for ATSC? What sort of geeks are you that you don't enjoy putting an antenna on the roof?

It's in the text, but you can sub out the Ceton for a Hauppauge 2250 or whatnot, and BTW that knocks the price well under $1k. We opted to list a since price configuration rather than multiple ones.

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While it is obvious much work went into this guide, it doesn't seem to address every-day usage.

Unfortunately we had to focus on the hardware or else the guide would've gotten massive, and addressing specifics of your local cable company... that could be a whole 'nother article (and a ton of legwork) in itself.

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Lastly, yet another HTPC guide that fails to mention SageTV?

I thought we did? Hmm. I forget. It's not an excuse, but at least here on the forums, SageTV gets very little mention compared to XMBC or MythTV or Windows Media Center. Compatibility was also a factor, but a secondary one.

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I can't believe Ars would recommend WD GREEN drives in a RAID

I personally don't use them either. Hell, we personally discovered many issues with WD drives back the WD1800BB days where I worked. My last prototype build with WD RE4-GP drives has had continuous issues with drive dropouts. The forums here are full of posts where I explicitly do NOT recommend them.

That said, there's just too many bloody people out there running them in RAID to say that they don't work. The real world is that people seem content to roll the dice.

We did the math, I didn't like it, but, well, we went with it anyway.

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Why no love for the Atom/ION combo?

Not enough CPU power to do proper timeshifting, combined with the fact that it didn't save us any money.

That and we were under the gun (deadlines), plus we were on some of the slowest internet known to man trying to research the last few bits of the guide. Something had to go.

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(Oh, and it will serve as a back-end too: it'll stream to all the other machines in your house running plex)

Not enough capacity for the guide. Now hook up a QNap 509 Turbo or something to it and five 2TB drives and you'd have enough capacity.

We would love to have covered more, especially an Atom/ION based combo and more on the software end, but we did have to limit the scope of this guide somewhat more than we'd like. Ditto for gaming HTPC configuration options and their ilk. That and hell, covering tuners alone was... much more extensive than we expected.

My build. Simple setup really. I have a dedicated blu-ray in the theater. Don't need it on the PC. 5 Xbox 360's cover my HD TVs. Gobs of disk space for central DVR. Xbox Live Gold Family Pack gets 4 gold subs for $99 bucks which gives me ESPN3 and Netflix, soon Hulu on all my TVs. My reasoning is explained in the blog.

Couple things I learned from the folks over at avsforum.com. Windows 7 MC expect approximately 1GB of RAM per extender. 5 extenders plus the PC puts things at a minimum of 6GB perhaps 8GB. Nothing but 64 bit will do here.

What I'm really looking for is Windows Home Server to do this job. I don't like having a desktop class OS running as a headless server but it is what it is.

Lastly, @hellokeith: My guess as to the reason why SageTV isn't mentioned as an OS is because Ceton's InfiniTV4 card only works with Windows 7. Many other OS/platforms are limited by the availability of CableCARD devices for their platform. Oh and the Ceton cards are on at least a 90 day back order. My order goes in soon.

Plex does look pretty sick, the killer feature IMO is the seamless IOS streaming. I use mediabrowser on Win7 for the same slick synopsis/covers type layout for me stored media, and plex is almost slick enough to make me want to jump to a mac mini.

The key being almost - the big advantage of Win7 is games, games and more games. Thanks to console-itis all games are aiming well below the bar for current gen PC gaming graphics hardware and new-ish AAA titles like Dirt2, Just Cause 2, NBA 2K11 etc. all run perfectly with a Core2Duo and a 100 dollar midrange card. Unless you want the exclusives (which I don't) its a virtual xbox360 and usually runs the games at faster FPS with more eye candy.

"front end" amd "back end" combined you are talking (in the article) about close to 3 grand to watch stuff on TV. From my perspective this is a joke. My gaming PC cost maybe 800AUD (less in greenbacks). I'm certain you could throw together a respectible HTPC for a fraction of that.

In fact, ^^^what PowerMacG4 said^^^ sounds about right to me (screw waiting for optical audio tho', just use USB audio and convert form there).

I was speccing out a HTPC last year and gave up due to the cost. It would have been cool and W7MC is pretty nice, but you can buy a Tivo premiere with lifetime service + a regular Blu Ray player (which has netflix, etc..) for less than what it costs to do a HTPC build esp with the cost of the Ceton Card. And if you are doing a STB, you will probably want a case that is nice looking and has high quality + quiet fans, which also ads to the cost.

Repurposing older PCs can get the cost down if they have enough CPU and can accommodate a modern graphics card that does HDMI and DTS-HD like the ATI 5000 series. But considering the power/heat concerns, the Clarkdale i3/i5 chips are the way to go with the built in video.. and that pushes you back into new components and the price goes back up.

"front end" amd "back end" combined you are talking (in the article) about close to 3 grand to watch stuff on TV.

There is no 'front end' in the guide. There is an all-in-one box to cover everything and still fit in the TV stand, and an in-case-you-just-need-to-transcode-and-stream-stuff backend box that you can use to run media directly to your media extender/game console/TV from out of sight if you don't want a computer in the entertainment center.

Thumbs up for my Mini set-up, too, which has been sitting under our TV for -- I think -- four years this Christmas, hooked up to an Iomega MiniHub HDD, a Miglia TVMax and a pair of Harman Kardon Soundsticks. Practically silent, low-power, and crashes pretty much never.